Five days into the Venice Film Festival, life on the Lido is barely recognisable. Anglophone critics are usually in the critical ward by this stage, suffering brain fatigue or with their eyes in traction after excess subtitle exercise. But English-speaking movies have outnumbered foreign ones, so far, by three to one. The festival talk is all about the filmmakers Brian De Palma, Paul Haggis, Ridley Scott (bringing Blade Runner: The Final Cut) and the Kenneths Loach and Branagh, Anglo-Americans to a man.

Have we been secretly teleported to Venice, California, instead of Venice, Italy? When did the Golden Lion last serve populist fare such as the George Clooney thriller Michael Clayton (murder, skulduggery and Tilda Swinton glammed up as an evil corporate lawyer), the army-base thriller In the Valley of Elah (a bread-and-jam whodunit in spite of Haggis's thick spreading of Iraq war allusions) or Branagh's loop-the-loopy attempt to refashion Sleuth with a Pinter script and Michael Caine and Jude Law playing hide-and-seek amid the arty camera angles.